


listen, the birds sing; listen, the bells ring

by skvadern



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Early Mornings, Interspecies Relationship(s), M/M, Morning After, Post-War, Religion, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:07:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28001382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skvadern/pseuds/skvadern
Summary: Still half-asleep, Tjelvar slips his hand under his head and keeps quiet, watching Ed watch the dawn. This doesn’t feel like something he should interrupt.
Relationships: Edward Keystone/Tjelvar Stornsnasson
Comments: 8
Kudos: 48
Collections: Rusty Quill Secret Santa 2020





	listen, the birds sing; listen, the bells ring

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bittercape (bittercape)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittercape/gifts).



> happy holidays, bittercape!! couldnt manage to work any adventure in - except the adventure of falling in love - but i hope this satisfies regardless.  
> title from in our bedroom after the war by stars

He’s not entirely sure what’s woken him up, at first. It could be nothing – Tjelvar’s had bouts of insomnia and broken sleep for most of his life – but after the state he’d been in when he finally got his head down, he’d expected to have a long, restful night.

When he slits his eyes open, the room is lit only dimly, pale light trickling in through the window that Tjelvar could have sworn he’d shuttered last night. There’s a moment of disorientation before he realises that the sheets beside him are cold, no weight dipping the mattress beside him. Another moment, before he realises why that’s strange.

Tjelvar blinks hazily, eyes finally focussing on the man sitting at the foot of the bed. Like this, knees drawn up to his chest and feet resting on the bedframe, back hunched a little, Ed doesn’t look his years. His gaze is fixed on the window, face placid and empty. Sitting so still, washed out in the half-light, he looks more like a statue than a man. When Tjelvar follows his gaze, he spots the slow bleed of light at the horizon, blue so pale it’s white tinged with red at the edges.

Still half-asleep, Tjelvar slips his hand under his head and keeps quiet, watching Ed watch the dawn. This doesn’t feel like something he should interrupt.

Tjelvar is not a religious man. He pays his dues to Athena, of course, and had once spent a night huddled in a shrine to Artemis, buried in the woods, and slept better than he has in most beds once his offerings are made. The gods are as much a fact in his life as in anyone’s, but he’s no devotee.

In other words, not like Ed, who worships his god the way most people sing. Loudly, quietly, absentmindedly as he goes about his day or swelling to a righteous crescendo to fill a room or a battlefield. It’s a little strange, to Tjelvar, who’s never spent that much time around clerics and paladins and the like. A little lovely.

He’d lost track of Ed, during the war. _War_ is what everyone’s been calling it, at least, though Tjelvar personally isn’t sure how accurate that is. _Conquest_ , perhaps. _Invasion_. Certainly, he hadn’t had the chance to think about one paladin he’d known for a few days, not while fleeing across the Alps, or being dragged into evacuation efforts, or chasing down rumours of powerful magical weapons even more laughable than the ones he’d built his career on.

They’d eventually bumped into each other in Germany, when everything was winding to a close. In another inn, of all places. It had been so strange to see him, this man who Tjelvar associated so strongly with the last days of his expedition, in another place and time. Stranger still, how Ed’s face had lit up to see him.

It had seemed only natural, to fall in together. Certainly, in these chaotic times, it’s safer to travel with a paladin. And once Ed’s particular way of looking at the world wasn’t interfering with Tjelvar’s life’s work, he’d found the human easy to get along with.

How they’d ended up in bed together, Tjelvar is less sure. It’s been a very long time since someone was close enough to him for this to enter his thoughts. And Ed had been relaxed for once, face bright and open, and that more than the beer had lowered Tjelvar’s guard as well. Besides, the inn they’re staying at has only given them a single bed, so they would have been sleeping together anyway, in the literal sense.

A flash-bulb memory from last night, when the sleeping together had gotten highly metaphorical, pops across his vision and Tjelvar shifts a little under the covers. Ed’s eyes flick over to him, for a moment, before returning to the window. “Morning, Tjel,” he greets quietly, his voice oddly subdued.

Tjelvar’s gotten used to the differences between the Ed he’d met in the Alps and the Ed who has fought through and survived the last few years, but this is still a little concerning. A nightmare, most likely. Ed’s nightmares are quiet, self-contained things, and Tjelvar rarely catches one, just the aftermath. He’d once compared it, in the privacy of his head, to the sun going behind a cloud.

“Good morning,” Tjelvar replies, before glancing at the semi-darkness outside. “Or, well.”

Ed tips his head to the side, resting it on his own bunched shoulder. “Back at seminary, you get up with the sun, and go to bed with it too. Or at least, you’re meant to. Winter makes it tricky, so we got to eat in the dark sometimes. And sometimes things take longer than you think they will, so you’ve got to stay up a bit later to make sure, especially in winter. But you always get up with the sun.” He nods to himself. “You do your morning prayers as the sun comes up.”

“Have you done yours yet?” Tjelvar asks, and Ed lifts a shoulder in a shrug.

“Not just get. You gotta wait till the sun crests the horizon.”

“Of course,” Tjelvar replies, a little foolishly. He draws his legs up, luxuriating in how the thick blankets have trapped their body heat, and settles in to watch.

Surprisingly, Ed does his prayers in silence. His lips move, but Tjelvar can’t hear even a whisper. He can’t help but wonder when Ed got into the habit of praying without noise, and once he starts wondering, well. Tjelvar’s never been particularly good at _not_ thinking about something.

He digs a tusk into his upper lip, hard, and forces himself to study Ed instead. Hard to think of horrible things, when you’re looking at someone so well-formed, so obviously content.

Ed seems to finish just as the sun fully crests the horizon. Already, it’s bright enough for Tjelvar to blink and avert his gaze; Ed, he notices, does nothing of the sort. With his prayers done, the distant, hardened quality to his face has softened and faded. In the morning sunlight, faint as it is, he looks real again.

“Come here,” Tjelvar says, without even thinking about it. Ed turns to him, staring for a moment, and Tjelvar can’t help but feel slightly off-balance under his frank regard. Then he shuffles back and practically throws himself across the bed, his arm smacking into Tjelvar’s stomach as he burrows in.

The impact shocks a laugh out of him, twisting to grapple with the ridiculously large pile of human wriggling into his arms. Instead, he quickly finds himself grappled, pushed onto his back with Ed lying heavy over his chest. They’re so close, Tjelvar goes slightly cross-eyed looking at him.

“I’m here,” Ed pronounces, twisting to lay his legs over Tjelvar’s. “You should go to sleep, though. It’s dead early for you, and you don’t sleep enough anyway.”

“How do you- I sleep just fine,” Tjelvar objects, quite reasonably. “Besides, I’m awake now.” He folds his hand under his head, and their faces are that little bit closer together.

“I was quiet,” Ed mutters. “Thought you’d stay sleeping.”

“Yes, well.” Tjelvar would like to look away, but Ed’s face is most of his vision, right now. “Your side of the bed went cold.”

Ed nods solemnly. “Sorry ‘bout that. I’ll put another blanket over you, next time.”

“See that you do,” Tjelvar sniffs, affecting his best Offended Posh, and when Ed grins back, he almost suffocates under the rush of warmth filling his chest. Of course, that could just be the massive paladin of a sun god draped across him.

The reshuffle has a hunk of Tjelvar’s hair trapped under his shoulders, and it tugs painfully. Growling under his breath, he pushes Ed back slightly so he can free it, and immediately Ed goes, shuffling back so that he’s sitting straddled over Tjelvar instead of lying on him. Giving him space that, truth be told, Tjelvar doesn’t particularly want. His hands trail awkwardly at his sides.

Tjelvar doesn’t quite know why he does it; maybe he’s drowsier than he’d thought. But he twists his head and lays his lips against Ed’s wrist, lightly pressing his tusks into the fragile skin. He can feel Ed’s pulse, just under one of them; slow and steady, though it picks up a little as he keeps his mouth, his tusks, resting against the warm, soft flesh. 

“Tjel?” Ed says, soft and tentative, and Tjelvar’s lips curl up, where they rest against the gentle throb of Ed’s life. It’s a fair question; Ed hasn’t known many orcs, and he almost certainly won’t know what it means, to rest your tusks against someone’s wrist. The tacit acknowledgement that you could do great harm, but that you won’t. That your partner will allow the threat without fear.

Still, he must grasp that this is _something_ , that it means something to Tjelvar, because he stays still, lets the moment hang.

Tjelvar only pulls back when his bare chest starts to prickle with the early-morning chill of the room. He presses a quick kiss to Ed’s pulse, and then pulls back to sling an arm around his back and haul him down. Ed goes with a huff, burrowing back in so that he’s half on top of Tjelvar, his head pillowed comfortably on Tjelvar’s shoulder. There’s a scar there, still a little vivid. A crossbow bolt, friendly fire from a man in Mykanos who hadn’t known he was uninfected, or maybe who’d just seen an orc and panicked. Ed had paid particular attention to it, last night; to all Tjelvar’s scars. There’d been something of the penitent about the way he’d kissed each one, eyes squeezed tight closed. Ridiculous, of course, to be sorry that he hadn’t been able to follow Tjelvar through literally every dangerous situation he’s ever been in, but that’s Ed.

And here’s Ed, right here, and Tjelvar thinks that maybe, with Ed warming his chest through, he could go back to sleep. Ed doesn’t seem too inclined to move, smiling softly as he goes loose and limp and, yes, bloody heavy on Tjelvar’s chest.

Tjelvar’s eyes flutter closed, the light from the window not yet bright enough to disturb him. Yes, he could do with a little more rest. He’s got everything he needs, right here.


End file.
